Strategies for Sustainable Business Development: Utilizing Consulting and Innovation Activities

This study explores strategies for sustainable business development via the process and performance of business consulting by using 200 samples of different industry sectors in South Korea. The main purposes of this paper are to build the consulting model framework and to analyze the relationships between consulting factors and consulting performance for establishing strategies for sustainable business development. First, the findings show that the support of CEOs for consulting projects and the innovation activities via exploration and exploitation (and ambidexterity) have higher impacts on the contribution to business performance than other consulting factors. Similarly, according to the results of IPMA, these variables are placed in a group of high importance and performance, so the findings indicate that the support of CEO and innovation activities play a central role in the consulting model. Second, the competency of CEOs for recognizing the awareness of newly changing market conditions and the importance of utilizing business consulting can serve as an engine to reach their sustainable business development. Moreover, the firms’ innovation activities via business consulting can increase their ability to utilize and absorb the external resources and knowledge for establishing strategies for sustainable business development. These abilities are used not only to induce their business innovation internally but also to pioneer new market opportunities amid a rapidly changing market environment.